Do Voters Support the “One Big Beautiful Bill”? And Does it Matter?
Lawmakers respond to many inputs. The public’s preferences are just one of them.
Recent polls suggest that the major reconciliation measure known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which narrowly passed the House in May, may not be especially popular with the public. For instance, an Economist/YouGov poll taken last month reported that a plurality (43%) opposed the measure, 40% thought it would increase their taxes, and 37% believed it would increase the deficit. Polls from Quinnipiac and the Washington Post-Ipsos also indicate general unhappiness with the bill.
I hesitate to read too much into these polls, at least at this stage of the legislative process. Natalie Jackson recently wrote about the limitations of issue-specific polls. There are also survey data that suggest many Americans aren’t especially aware of the bill, let alone what’s in it.1 For instance, while the aforementioned Economist/YouGov poll found that nearly 80% of respondents had an opinion about the reconciliation bill, 41% were not sure whether they supported extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) – the central purpose of the legislation.2
But suppose, for the sake of argument, that majorities of Americans do in fact oppose the measure. There are still good reasons to expect Congress to pass the bill anyway, or at least its core features.
For one thing, the costs of failure are high. Since the measure renews tax cuts that are set to expire this year, taxes on many people will go up if it isn’t passed, an outcome that would generate a slew of negative headlines and make a lot of people quite upset. Matters will be even worse if Congress fails to increase the debt ceiling, as the bill would also do.
Furthermore, Republicans may worry that their party’s reputation for legislating – or, put another way, its productivity brand – will be damaged, especially they don’t have many other major items on their agenda. In a 2018 journal article, William Deatherage and I argued that this same dynamic encouraged the G.O.P. to pass the TCJA in the first place, even though that measure had many unpopular provisions as well.
In addition, in our polarized political environment, where there are very few swing states or districts – not to mention the fact that members of Congress are not elected by the country at large – lawmakers are incentivized to focus more on the preferences of their partisan constituents. And views on the reconciliation bill are highly divided by party: in the May poll, 76% of Republicans expressed support for the legislation (and only 8% opposed it), while just 7% of Democrats favored the measure while 80% did not.
Finally, the advocacy of outside political actors may go a long way towards getting the bill across the legislative finish line. Lobbying by President Trump, who remains popular among GOP voters, may have helped smooth passage of the measure in the House. Interest groups representing the GOP’s core constituencies who benefit the most from the bill will be pushing hard to get it enacted.
This does not mean the legislation that passed the House is destined to become law unchanged. A number of Senators raised concerns about the bill almost as soon as it passed the House, and even some House Republicans came out against controversial provisions tucked away in the bill, like limits on court injunctions and a ban on state regulations of artificial intelligence, though (conveniently) they did only after they had voted for it. Some of those provisions were subsequently modified or eliminated through an unrelated procedural rule that passed the House. The Senate’s initial version of the bill also differs from the House measure in some important ways, and more tweaks, both large and small, are likely to be made in negotiations within the Senate and between the two chambers.
The bill’s larger effects are also potentially problematic and may spur more revisions. For instance, polls have found that significant majorities of Republicans believe Medicaid should get the same or more funding (64%) and are somewhat or very concerned about the size of the federal deficit (80%). But the bill includes major cuts to Medicaid and would greatly worsen the country’s balance sheet, and if those features become salient to Republican voters, lawmakers may feel compelled to modify those measures without necessarily abandoning the bill altogether.
On top of all this, keep in mind that, with tiny majorities in Congress, it will only take a few lawmakers in either chamber with their own particular concerns, such as Republicans in the House SALT Caucus, to be able to force changes to the measure in exchange for their much-needed votes.
These factors may encourage alterations to the One Big Beautiful Bill (OB3?), but if I had to take a bet, I’d say that most of the bill will be signed into law. There are too many reasons for Republicans to make that happen, irrespective of what the public thinks.
The Washington Post-Ipsos poll, which was taken in early June, found that 66% of respondents heard a little or nothing about the reconciliation bill.
In addition, the survey estimated preferences about the bill with questions that asked about the president’s “proposed budget” and about a “new tax plan,” which respondents may or may not have understood to be referring to the reconciliation bill.
Voters had their say last November. No give backs. Shut up and take the abuse!